With the weather finally improving, many of you will be looking forward to weekend drives and long distance trips. This makes saving money on gas even more important to your gas budget. Here are some tips to keep more gas money in your pocket.
- Don’t have unnecessary weight in your car. Items in your trunk like golf clubs add extra weight, which takes extra gas to move your car.
- Use your brakes as little as possible. Coast up to red lights and don’t tailgate. Every time you brake it means you used more gas then you needed too.
- Make sure your tires are at the proper pressure. Check the pressure once a month as leaks and temperature changes will deflate them. Under-inflated tires decrease your fuel efficiency.
- Use cruise control on highways. Keeping a constant speed is better than slowing down and speeding up.
- Try to avoid traffic. Not only will this save you time, but not idling will save you some gas.
- Consider moving closer to work. I’m about to to this and will cut my gas expense by more than half. This could also prolong the life of your car.
- Don’t keep roof storage, bike racks or ski racks attached to the car unless they’re needed. These cause wind resistance and your car will burn more gasoline to overcome this resistance.
- Drive under 100 km/hr. Apparently your car’s fuel efficiency drops considerably after this speed.
- Use a credit card and a points card that saves you money on the pump price. Even if you only use this credit card for gas, getting an extra discount is a plus.
- The most obvious one, you might want to consider the car you drive. Getting a smaller car or a hybrid might greatly increase your fuel efficiency over your current vehicle.
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Google map your trip. There might be a shorter route, or one with more highway travel. This will save gas.
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Useful tips, thanks so much for sharing.
I had a Toyota Prius last year when gas was over $4/gallon. It was great getting 78mpg, but the fun ended when I had an accident. Those cars are so max expensive.
The over 100km/h is key especially if you drive an SUV or truck. I recently did a long trip on roads that I had to average 85 km/h. I could not beleive the difference in my mileage. I would say it had to be close to 1/3 or more better that when I drive at about 115 on the major 400 series highways.
I’ve read somewhere that the ideal fuel saving speed to travel is 70km/h. This is certainly more so if you are driving a boxy van or SUV.
As for the car, diesels are best when kept at a constant RPM, this is why they are used in trains, boats etc. If you keep you diesel engine at a constant RPM efficiency increases remarkably and your wallet will be all the happier for that. For most diesels the ideal rpm for cruise should be around 1,500.